Bio - Bj

Birch, Frank. The Official History of British Sigint, 1914-1945, Vol. 1 (Part 1). Milton Keynes: Military Press, 2004.

Kruh, Cryptologia 29.2 (Apr. 2005), comments that "this fascinating official history ... was written immediately after World War II when Birch was the official 'Sigint' historian in the United Kingdom." This is "the most authoritative account of how the British signals intelligence organization was developed."

[UK/Overviews/00s]

Bird, Kai. The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames. New York: Crown, 2014.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer, 2 Feb. 2014, says the author's "meticulous account of Ames's career amid an ongoing Mideast climate of caution and suspicion is one of the best books on American intelligence community."

To Mann, Washington Post, 23 May 2014, the author "has found in Ames a wonderful new subject." The book "has some flaws. There is a lot of repetition.... The writing is disjointed: The narrative loses some steam after Salameh's death, and much more as the book meanders on after Ames's death. Yet 'The Good Spy' succeeds on the basis of Bird's considerable research skills, his interviews with intelligence officials, his access to Ames's letters home and, above all, his ability to spot and put together an engrossing biography." Darlington, Intelligencer 20.3 (Spring-Summer 2014), says that "Bird's portrait of Ames is holistic, professional and personal."

Chapman, IJI&C 28.1 (Spring 2015), focuses on what he sees as the downside of Ames' way of doing business. "Although not stated as such, Ames committed a major intelligence mistake: he fell in love with his agent [Salameh]. Doing so was bad tradecraft, and certainly bad mangement for Headquarters to allow it to continue." The author "tells of bad intelligence practices as though they were good.... Ames was, in essence, a loose cannon."

[CIA/Biogs/Ames]

Bird, Kai, and Martin J. Sherwin. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Freedman, FA 84.3 (May-Jun. 2005), calls this work a "stunning blockbuster" based on "a daunting amount of research." The authors "do full justice to the complexity of Oppenheimer's story." To Powers, NYRB 52.14 (22 Sep. 2005), this work "is clear in its purpose, deeply felt, persuasively argued, disciplined in form, and written with a sustained literary power."

Goulden, Washington Times, 28 Feb. 2012, and Intelligencer 19.1 (Winter-Spring 2012), notes that "SMERSH ... existed as a military counterintelligence organization only from April 1943 to May 1946.... [T]his book can be tedious reading at times. Mr. Birstein has long riffs on the Soviet security services both before and after the brief life of SMERSH. While the unconventional sexual activities of such spy bosses as Lavrenti Beria and Genrich Yagoda make for salacious reading, they seem rather remote from the subject at hand. Nonetheless, it's a worthwhile read."

For King, NIPQ 28.2 (Jul. 2012), the 10 years the author spent researching this book shows. "While the detail is sometimes tedious, the story he unfolds is fascinating." Peake, Studies 56.2 (Jun. 2012) notes that "with a few exceptions," this book is "based on secondary sources."

Soviet "military counterintelligence was, with the exception of a few months in 1941 and from 1943-1946, part of the security services and not of the military." This was because "the Bolshevik leaders did not trust military professionals and was afraid of them."

[Russia/Overviews/MI]

Birtle, Andrew J. U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine 1942-1976. Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2006.

Cassidy, Parameters 37.4 (Winter 2007-08), comments that this is a "gem of a book." It has "eight full chapters on the development, propagation, and implementation of counterinsurgency and contingency operations doctrine." In his conclusion, the author assesses "the impact and value of the entire corpus of Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine vis-à-vis the lack of military success in Vietnam."

For Crane, Army History 66 (Winter 2008), "[t]his book features fine writing, extensive research, a provocative thesis, and a terrible title.... Birtle gives the reader far more than a dry exposition on Army doctrine. This is really the story of how the United States tried to prevent the spread of Communism with a combination of military deployments and social engineering."

The findings of Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine,
published on 18 November 1999 in the French magazine L'Express,
identify "Mathieu Golovinski, opportunistic scion of an aristocratic
but rebellious family who drifted into a life of espionage and propaganda
work," as the author of the infamous anti-Semitic forgery "Protocols
of the Elders of Zion." In his lifetime, Golovinski managed to serve
both the Tsar and the Bolsheviks. According to Lepekhine, Golovinski wrote
the "Protocols" at the end of 1900 or the beginning of 1901.

French Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou told
the French parliament on 23 February 2000 "that Echelon, the spy satellite
network, had ceased to have a military function after the Cold War and
was now used for commercial snooping."

In 1958 and 1959, Sihanouk learned that he could use neutrality in the
struggle against Thai and Vietnamese influence in Cambodia. Henceforth,
he assumed that "he could score points against his neighbours by carefully
balancing East against West."

Bixler, Margaret T. Winds of Freedom: The Story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II. Darien, CT: Two Bytes Press, 1992.

From publisher: This book "explores and broadens understanding of the Navajo Nation and its culture by telling the real-life stories of a remarkable group of Navajo men who developed and implemented the only code the enemy was never able to decipher during World War II."

"This report sets forth possible considerations for Congress as it executes its oversight role. These issues include the extent to which intelligence has been integrated into FBI operations to support its counterterrorism mission and the progress the Bureau has made on its intelligence reform initiatives."

[FBI/10s/13; Terrorism/10s/13]

Bjerklie, David, and Coco Masters. ""How the CIA Can Be Fixed." Time, 22 May 2006, 40-41.